love* in the time of plague (and by love* i mean brexit* and other dreary matters of uk politics)

(xp) Ah right, I was about to say there wasn't any reason for him to be seen in public and he might be working away behind the scenes but was hoping his absence (and Johnson's) had allowed the Tories to quietly bin him like the rubbish he is.

speaking of boris at chequers, this is from the grauniad’s bojo-at-death’s-door retrospective today

Johnson had experienced a scare, no doubt about that.

One specialist said he thought the prime minister had gilded the lily a bit – “I suspect there’s been an element of poetic licence there” – but at the same time stressed that he did need oxygen, albeit through a face mask rather than Cpap or full mechanical ventilation.

The specialist did not begrudge Johnson being put into ICU, reasoning “he’s the prime minister”, and “without that oxygen he would not have got better”.

The saga had a curious footnote.

Photographs taken from a public footpath showed Johnson and Symonds walking with their dog in the grounds of Chequers, the prime minister bundled up in a duffel coat and gloves. He looked pale but well enough to go for a stroll. Most ICU patients leave hospital in a wheelchair. They suffer from exhaustion, muscle wastage and other chronic problems. The prime minister appears to be in much better shape.

He definitely strikes he as the sort of guy who calls an ambulance out when he gets a splinter in his finger.

he was swinging the lead, gilding the lily, taking the fucking piss however you want to put it imo!

‘Public and media pressure pushed the lockdown. We didn’t want it’

-Cabinet Minister via ⁦@Telegraph⁩

-Astonishing #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/cp9IpNLiGl

— Paul Johnson (@paul__johnson) April 18, 2020

Suggests unrestricted herd immunity plan still has fans in Cabinet.

I see that the Telegraph ran a front page story about there being up to 7,500 deaths in care homes. Which strikes me as a warning shot?

Re ICU, not sure a “gentle stroll” really contradicts any of the above. He was only in there a couple of weeks, as far as we know not intubated. Not sure a few minutes walking will do him any harm.

Rajesh Jayaseelan died in fear of eviction. He starved bc he was worried his landlord would discover he was ill

His death is an utter tragedy

We need to make sure this NEVER happens again and end evictions for good. No one should ever have to choose between food or rent 🖤✊ https://t.co/XwtytTspOs

— London Renters Union (@LDNRentersUnion) April 18, 2020

let's liquidate the landlords (again)

The quoted minister is clearly Williamson or Shapps or some other fuckwit. I'd be surprised if there was any agreement in Cabinet on this issue at all.

Williamson is a cursed name.

Thread on Cheltenham.

In March, 200,000 people attended the Cheltenham Festival. Now, a month later, the NHS trust which runs Cheltenham hospital is reporting the highest number of deaths in the South West - more than double that of any other SW trust.

This is the anatomy of a disaster [thread]. pic.twitter.com/tUPAFOcAv0

— automnia (@aut_omnia) April 18, 2020

Was there an equivalent spike in Liverpool since the game with Atletico? Smaller crowd but still.

I can remember a short segment on what I think was played on the bbc news last month - a humorous interview with two drunk looking Chelts revelers joking about how much they didn't give a shit about the Rona.

Most ICU patients leave hospital in a wheelchair. They suffer from exhaustion, muscle wastage and other chronic problems. The prime minister appears to be in much better shape.

This will be handwaved as Johnson just being tough and his positive attitude getting him through. He was reported as being dismissive about sickness in the past like it was a failing. The question remains how many people he may have passed it on to himself with his idiotic attitude.

The Atletico Liverpool game definitely accelerated things - given the scale of the outbreak in Madrid at the time it absolutely should not have gone ahead.

tbf our PM was mortally wounded by a plastic fork during a champagne picnic that week, he needed a week or two to recover from that terrible injury, leaving a power vacuum that meant all that went wrong in that period was everyone else's fault!

> Cheltenham hospital

that's the one my dad was in a couple of weeks ago getting his pacemaker (and the one i was born in)

Passed 15k.

reminder that new zealand have had 11 deaths

The government has emphasised repeatedly that the relaxation of the measures is provisional and that continued progress will require the development of sophisticated contact-tracing programmes, including the controversial suggestion that smartphones be used in a widespread programme to track interactions between citizens.

yikes seems like that would be particularly fraught in germany, world capital of privacy*

*freikörperkultur excluded

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EV0dBtLXYAEeamt?format=jpg&name=large
Only bad thing about this is it makes it difficult for them to publish lies/blatantly antisemitic cartoons and leave a physical record.

I thought they might have already stopped free paper print editions, which invariably get abandoned on bus/train seats + end up being handled by multiple people. Especially such a riveting read as the ES.

That's it - it's dead, no one is going to willingly go to the Evening Standard website.

Think they’re ready to swap out Boris

Remarkable from senior No 10 adviser: “What you learn about Boris was he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends ... There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared” https://t.co/rvWh9xYQFq

— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) April 18, 2020

goodbye xunt

Can't see them getting rid of Boris unless that poll ratings is really thrashed for the next three years.

Absolutely damning report in tomorrow's Sunday Times:

"Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus, calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears. Failings in February may have cost thousands of lives." https://t.co/81AanvTUmU

— Jakub Krupa (@JakubKrupa) April 18, 2020

This is pretty brutal given its the Sunday Times.

That’s the one I linked. The Times is performing the legwork to get him out. Ofc the Times itself is just a perfectly neutral observer in all this.

Well done Gideon, fucked up a country and fucked up a newspaper, next go fuck up a thinktank or a crap NGO.

now we've got a lame puppet LOTO perhaps we get a GNU but they demote Boris or something? This country is so diseased and rabid he'll still have a sky high approval rating even when the Murdoch press are exposing him as an incompetent lying lazy twat.

Unless he looks like a wreck when he emerges and can "take a back seat while recovering" I'm not sure how they'd pull this off

Owen Jones has a thread with some of the key points

The Sunday Times investigation into the government's catastrophic handling of the coronavirus is one of the most important things you've read.

It's behind a paywall, so here's a thread with the key points. Make sure everyone sees it. pic.twitter.com/m0yERyf1Uj

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) April 18, 2020

Full story archived here

https://archive.is/20200418182037/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlgh

This is big and unexpected from a Tory point of view. Somebody's obviously out to get him. The thing is, anybody they could conceivably replace him with would be less popular with the public, and that's before the fun of a full-blown party knife fight. So why now and who's behind it I'm not sure?

Boris’s popularity isn’t organic. The press built him up and they’ll drag him down again.

this is all part of tom tugendhat’s long, long game

Murdoch wants Gove, who's far less of a populist and completely loyal, right? The electorate would just have to lump it.

Though I don't think anything will actually come of this, mind you, except maybe some good acting for the cameras. That's all Johnson is good at.

Murdoch paper, lots of people suggesting Gove is KRM’s chosen replacement.

just when you thought things couldn't get any worse. In some ways I think a power vacuum or a lazy useless Boris would be safer than Gove, because he has lots of shit ideas and has that possessed ventriloquist's dummy energy to see them through.

Can't believe I'm saying this but I think Gove would have handled this whole thing much better. So from that perspective... preferable.

he probably would have done ... something at least!

that comical ali downing street spokesman response at the bottom of the Times piece could only come from a completely dysfunctional government. It's like they are still trying to carry on like it is 2010.

"David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith have teamed up with Keir Starmer..." https://t.co/oxFMEVyw7Z

— Trizzy Gillespie (@BlackXList) April 18, 2020

so Starmer's line of pushing the govt on an exit strategy is in concordance with the Daily Mail, IDS, various right wing think tanks, Donald Trump... I know there has to be an exit strategy but how about a staying alive strategy instead until a more opportune moment for an exit one arises?

god only knows

i know it's a grim thought btw but to some extent BoJo's popularity is "organic", or at least people have bought into the long-established persona. nobody wd've been praying for Gove to recover.

and of course he got Brexit done

Gove can't even drink a glass of water without looking like a tralfamadorian exile. He's never going to have the approval rating Boris has right now, even if he did good work and saved thousands of needless deaths.

lol "saved"

saved them for ron, later ron!

i know it's a grim thought btw but to some extent BoJo's popularity is "organic", or at least people have bought into the long-established persona. nobody wd've been praying for Gove to recover.

I sometimes wonder about the veracity of his approval ratings but this is a cursed country